* Citizen Kane (1941). Orson Welles’s groundbreaking fictional biopic of a newspaper magnate featured an equally groundbreaking score which was more spare than what had gone before, and made great use of the brass and woodwind sections of the orchestra to create a sense of darkness and an oppressive atmosphere.

* The Ghost and Mrs Muir (1947). Beguiling period romantic fantasy about the love affair between a young widow (Gene Tierney) and the ghost of a gruff sea captain (Rex Harrison). Herrmann’s exquisite score conveyed all the longing and desire that couldn’t be portrayed onscreen. This YouTube film is a lovely homage to this cult movie which, I reckon, would make a wonderful double bill with the equally romantic and beautifully scored (by John Barry) 1981 time travel film Somewhere in Time.

* On Dangerous Ground (1952). Herrmann named his romantic score for this cultish mood piece about the slow-burning relationship between tough city cop Robert Ryan and a blind girl as his favourite of his own work.

* The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956): Herrmann not only wrote the extraordinarily tense music for Hitchcock’s kidnapping drama (which stars James Stewart and Doris Day), but is also seen conducting the orchestra (playing Arthur Benjamin’s Storm Clouds Cantata) at the Albert Hall in the climactic scene.

* Vertigo (1958). Herrmann’s repetitive, pulsating, spiraling music not only reflects James Stewart’s obsession with Kim Novak but enables the audience to experience its effects as well.

And as for the love theme … well, listen and sigh..

* North By Northwest (1959). One of the sexiest and most tongue-in-cheek Hitchcock films, it stars Cary Grant in a case of mistaken identity and has a suitably quirky, though magnificent and dramatic, Herrmann score – a fandango, of all things. John Wilson says: “I’d love to do that film with the live orchestra….”

* Psycho (1960): The ultimate Hitchcock thriller, and the ultimate Herrmann score – which John Wilson says “does stand upon its own, it’s wonderfully unique”. Janet Leigh stars as the young woman on the run who soon regrets checking into the Bates Motel.. Right from the start, the music lets us know that something bad is going to happen…

* Cape Fear (1962). So effective was Herrmann’s thunderous, menacing score for J Lee Thompson’s terrifying thriller – in which Robert Mitchum played the psychotic Max Cady – that Martin Scorsese retained it for his 1991 remake.

* Marnie (1964). The lush romantic music for this film outclasses the performances by Tippi Hedren as the eponymous kleptomaniac, and Sean Connery as the man who wants to save her.

* Taxi Driver (1976): With this brooding, and intermittently romantic, urban-sounding score, Herrmann ended his career as he had started it – at the top, with one of the most important films of the decade, Martin Scorsese’s study of disturbed Robert De Niro’s descent into violence.